Farmers arriving to protest to bring along saplings to plant at Singhu protest site

Amandeep Singh Bains, one of the volunteers said that they have already planted 10 saplings at Singhu border as a symbolic gesture and work has begun to encourage farmers to do the same.

Saplings being planted at Singhu border on the initiative of 'Tractor2Twitter'

With the ongoing farmers’ protest at Delhi borders against the Centre’s three farm laws being termed as ‘historic’ in many ways, a group of volunteers from Ludhiana have taken a ‘green’ initiative to leave behind a legacy for the coming generations.

Volunteers from the team of ‘Tractor2Twitter’ — an online platform encouraging the youths to use Twitter and take the voice of the farmers to social media — have planted saplings at Singhu border.

They have also given a call to farmers who are arriving to join the protest, to bring along at least one sapling, and plant it at the protest spot where they park their tractors.

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Speaking to The Indian Express, Amandeep Singh Bains, one of the volunteers from Tractor2Twitter (@Tractor2twitr) said that they have already planted 10 saplings at Singhu border as a symbolic gesture and work has begun to encourage farmers to do the same.

Read | Come rain or shine: 2,000 tractors power ahead to Shahjahanpur, covering 22 villages

“This agitation by farmers of Punjab and Haryana, against the central government, is historic in many ways. It is a great act of resistance and a perfect example to show our coming generations that peaceful demonstrations are the most powerful in a democracy. Our motive is to leave behind a legacy which lives forever. In future, whenever people especially youths should pass from this site, they should see something which should remind them of the agitation which started from here at Singhu border and the way it got scripted in the history of our country. Singhu border is witness to a historic farmers agitation and it should be preserved in some way,” said Bains.

Ten saplings were planted in the presence of elderly farmers at the protest site.

Bhavjit Singh, an IT professional from Australia and co-founder of Tractor2Twitter, said saplings being planted at Singhu border would become ‘morche di nishaani’ (a symbol in the memory of the protest). “Rather than constructing any memorial or a concrete structure, we thought of planting trees because nothing can be better than a green memorial which would live for decades to come,” said Bhavjit.

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On the need to start a platform like ‘Tractor2Twitter’ which raises the voice of farmers on Twitter, Bains said, “In current times, Twitter is one of the most powerful online mediums and we thought of creating a Twitter account (@Tractor2twitr) where youths can raise concerns of the farmers. Currently our account has more than 26,000 followers and daily we post a hashtag for farmers to follow.”

Divya Goyal

Divya Goyal is a Principal Correspondent with The Indian Express, based in Punjab. Her interest lies in exploring both news and feature stories, with an effort to reflect human interest at the heart of each piece. She writes on gender issues, education, politics, Sikh diaspora, heritage, the Partition among other subjects. She has also extensively covered issues of minority communities in Pakistan and Afghanistan. She also explores the legacy of India's partition and distinct stories from both West and East Punjab. She is a gold medalist from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), Delhi, the most revered government institute for media studies in India, from where she pursued English Journalism (Print). Her research work on “Role of micro-blogging platform Twitter in content generation in newspapers” had won accolades at IIMC. She had started her career in print journalism with Hindustan Times before switching to The Indian Express in 2012. Her investigative report in 2019 on gender disparity while treating women drug addicts in Punjab won her the Laadli Media Award for Gender Sensitivity in 2020. She won another Laadli for her ground report on the struggle of two girls who ride a boat to reach their school in the border village of Punjab. ... Read More

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